Audio Articles: How to Make Your Content More Accessible

Audio articles not only help those with visual impairments but can also be used in unique ways to tell stories.

Working with audio allows you to add dimensions and meaning to stories. While words are always at the center, elements like music, field recordings, and other sounds can also serve as voices in a narrative.

We’re going to discuss the design behind audio articles, and how sound can transform storytelling by evoking feelings, setting the mood, and engaging with visitors on a deeper level.

What is an audio article?

Audio articles tell stories through sound. They can be straightforward word-for-word readings of text articles, or immersive experiences where music and ambient sounds add to the context and tone.

Some are traditional journalism reporting on an issue or topic through fact-based explanations. Others take the form of personal storytelling, where people open up about their experiences in the hopes of connecting with others who’ve faced similar challenges or emotions.

Audio articles make content more accessible

While audio articles are a great way to consume content on the go, they also serve a higher purpose. For people with visual impairments, learning difficulties, or other conditions, audio may be the only option for effectively engaging with content.

Another advantage of audio articles is that unlike e-readers which are typically tied to specific platforms, audio articles can be listened to across various hardware devices.

Common features of audio articles

Narration

While publications with large volumes of content to push out often use text-to-speech or AI applications, many feature real people doing the readings. Hearing an actual human reading something can add expressiveness and feeling that’s impossible through text alone.

Placement

Audio articles are commonly positioned at the top, accompanied by a headline or other text that explains to visitors about the topic or story being told.

Social media sharing

Did you just listen to something that you can’t wait to post about? Many audio articles offer the option to generate links or code snippets that make them easy to share.

UI elements

Audio articles have controls that often resemble those found on analog or digital music players. Elements like play/pause buttons, playback speed, and capabilities to skip ahead or rewind, give listeners control of their listening experience.

Story progress indicators

Often in the visual form of a line or waveform, audio articles have graphic representations showing where someone is in the recording.

Examples of audio articles

Flipping Failure: Meet Siyoung

Flipping Failure is an MIT initiative focused on helping students with their well-being. Whether the topic is being homesick, picking a major, or managing coursework, each audio article covers students who’ve faced challenges and how they got through them.

In the audio article Meet Siyoung, Siyoung discusses her struggles with anxiety. The audio is largely unedited, with a sense of honesty that feels like a friend confiding in you. Background sounds like birds chirping and mellow instrumental music adds to the emotional weight of her story.

There’s a particularly beautiful moment after Siyoung calls mental health services where she’s sitting on a bench on a spring day, describing the lightness and warmth that she’s feeling. The change of seasons mirrors so well the personal shift she has just made in seeking help.

Another key feature of Flipping Failure’s audio articles is using SoundCloud. With its easy to embed code snippets, and intuitive UI, it’s a great choice for hosting audio.

Quaker Stories: 100 Reasons to Rise

Quaker Presents: 100 Reasons to Rise is an artistic branded journalism piece documenting the lives of people aged 1 to 100 as they go about their mornings. While candid black-and-white portraits by photographers Misan Harriman and Domizia Salusest are a key part of the storytelling, hearing the featured individuals speak in their own words is just as important. The strength of this piece lies in how text, images, and audio are interconnected, working together to help us understand who these people are and the significance of what they’re experiencing.

New York Magazine: Chess Brat

While Chess Brat is a word-for-word reading of a story about controversial chess champion Hans Niemann, hearing writer Jen Wieczner’s inflections and cadence gives the piece an almost musical rhythm, with her personality touching every word. Audio is such a different experience than text, and Wieczner’s spirited reading makes this a thrilling and compelling listen.

The simple UI, featuring a play/stop button and red progress line, follows a standard audio setup, making it easy to jump in and start listening.

StoryCorps

StoryCorps stands out with its diversity of stories told by people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. What’s so profound about these audio articles aren’t our differences but the hopes, fears, and dreams that are part of our shared humanity.

In She’s Probably the Strongest Woman You’ll Ever Remember Meeting: Remembering the Mother of Women’s Judo, Jean Kanokogi remembers her mother Rusty Kanokogi. Rusty broke through the gender barrier by clandestinely fighting a man in a 1959 judo competition. While she legitimately won the match, when the judges found out she was female, she had to forfeit her win. Rusty would later help get judo into the 1988 Olympics. It’s a story of pushing against societal constraints that anyone who has trouble fitting in will find inspiring.

Along with its StoryCorps meaningful stories, is a practical UI. Each audio article has a cover image with large square buttons and a big red progress band, making it easy to listen and see where you’re at in the recording.

Zetland

While only available in Danish, Zetland is considered one of the pioneers of audio storytelling. Their work is known for its well-polished sense of production, with each article read by the author, filled with music and other audio embellishments.

Along with well-crafted audio articles, the UI is clean and simple. A big play button, with its thick weighted outline is impossible to miss, with one click being all it takes to begin hearing a story.

Future Music

What will music sound like 500 years from now? To begin answering this question, one must go back 500 years. While the music composed during that era is generations removed from modern life, we can still hear the influence of its melodies, phrasing, and rhythms.

OnlySky, the platform where A Theory of Future Music is featured, is full of essays and audio articles exploring the wonders of the world, focusing on the science behind them. While there isn’t anything extra added to this audio article, writer Dale McGowan, who has a PhD in music composition, delivers it with enthusiasm and curiosity, making learning about the future of music even more interesting.

The Woman Who Made Van Gogh

The Woman Who Made Van Gogh, featured in The New York Times Magazine, is a historical documentary telling about how  Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, helped bring attention to the artist’s legacy. Without her efforts in preserving and promoting his paintings, sketches, and letters, it’s possible that Vincent van Gogh wouldn’t have gained the recognition he ultimately achieved.

It’s an intriguing story and a wonderful piece of writing that works exceptionally well as an audio article. With its inquisitive narrative tone and touches of music, it sparkles with emotion and intrigue, exploring Van Gogh’s story of tragedy and genius and how Jon van Gogh-Bonger helped bring his art to the world.

United Nations: Global Perspective Human Stories

The United Nations Global Perspective Human Stories has a huge library of audio articles covering issues that affect people across the world, featuring interviews with experts discussing what’s happening, and potential solutions.

Each audio article has a brief sentence or neat bullet points that perfectly capture what’s being discussed. Along with its concise summations helping visitors, it’s easy to navigate. One never has to leave the page, with each audio article directly playable from the main collection.

Another great feature is the social media share buttons, making it easy to share articles on Facebook, X, or via email, in helping spread further awareness to these humanitarian issues.

Create Websites that Include Audio with Vev

Along with offering a creative palette of tools, animations, and elements to design visually inspired websites, Vev also makes it possible to add audio to your designs. Right from Vev’s visual editor there are ready-made components for embedding audio from platforms like SoundCloud, Spotify, and Tidal, as well as the capabilities to work with HTML5 audio elements.

Begin creating your own immersive and multi-media website experiences through Vev.